Towards better disaster management

Speaking at a special ceremony held at the Aiwan-e-Sadr on Friday to honour individuals and organisations who made outstanding contributions to rescue and relief operations in the aftermath of October 2005 earthquake, President General Pervez Musharraf specified some plans and suggestion for the future in the light of important lessons learnt from the unprecedented tragedy.
He talked of the need for an integrated National Disaster Management Plan and setting up of a National Disaster Management Authority. The government, he said, is already taking steps to establish viable disaster management institutions with adequate powers, resources and skills to address future contingencies.
Indeed, these measures have been long overdue, given that natural disasters, especially floods, have been common occurrences in this country. Then there is the well-known dark reality that large parts of the country are located atop geotectonic fault lines as well as seismic zones. Experts also say its coastal areas are well within the path of possible tsunamis.
The earthquake that struck Pakistan nearly a year ago, as the President recalled, killed over 73,000 people, injured another 70,000, wiped out a whole generation of children and youth. 3.5 million people in a 30,000 square miles area were affected, 1.5 million people being displaced.
More than half a million homes were damaged and nearly 4000 educational institutions demolished; also destroy were road, telecom links and other key infrastructure elements. It hardly needs saying that had disaster management institutions been in place, timely rescue and rehabilitation efforts could have played a valuable role in saving lives.
Nonetheless, no matter how well-prepared the government had been to meet natural disaster, it could not have done the necessary work all on its own. Such a colossal calamity required international response. Now that the world is becoming more and more like a global village, it must devise global responses to big disasters, whether natural or man-made. President Musharraf made two important suggestions towards that end as he called for the setting up of an effective early warning systems, and a global fund to meet emergency requirements in disaster situations.
Although it is not possible yet for experts to make precise predictions about earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and other such natural disasters, human knowledge of the natural phenomena has advanced enough where scientists can, and do, give warnings of seismic activity that might lead to an earthquake or tsunami as well as likely routes of big storms. In fact, the countries that are more prone to tsunamis have well-established early warning systems.
The last Asian tsunami caused as much death and destruction as it did because some countries in its path, such as Sri Lanka and India, had no early warning system at all. It is imperative, therefore, to create internationally co-ordinated early warning systems for natural disasters.
The example of Pakistan's earthquake also shows how important it is to establish a global fund to meet emergency requirements in disaster situations. Aside from the rescue operations that entailed a Herculean transport and relief effort, President Musharraf pointed out, the rehabilitation operations necessitated the "provision of nearly one million tents, 6.3 million blankets, over 300,000 MTS of food, medicines and other supplies, as well as setting up of tented villages, medical facilities, welfare homes for women and children, and construction of half a million shelters." Since the earthquake came soon after the tsunami, the international community, apparently suffering from donor fatigue, took a long time to respond to the needs of the earthquake victims.
As distressing as that experience was for Pakistan and various humanitarian organisations eager to provide succour to the victims, it is reflective of the insufficiency of existing funding facilities that must be addressed through the establishment of a global fund for disaster management.